Dow Chemical Not Yet Seeing Eye To Eye With Unidentified Man Who Sounds A Lot Like Dan Loeb

Dow Chemical said on Tuesday that it saw no value in pursuing a significant breakup, dealing a setback to a hedge fund manager who encouraged the company to split its petrochemicals and specialty chemicals businesses…Dow was already trying to streamline its operations, and its chief executive, Andrew N. Liveris, appeared to rebuff Mr. Loeb’s proposal on a conference call later in January. “We’ve actually done the divestment of what might be called the traditional petchem business,” he said, without identifying Mr. Loeb by name.

On Tuesday, the company provided an official response to Mr. Loeb’s idea (although, again, it did not mention Mr. Loeb or his firm, Third Point, by name). A recent review “found that a breakup of the company in a significant manner (simplistically described as petrochemical and specialty chemical assets) created no productivity or capital allocation improvements, but rather negatively impacted Dow’s value proposition which leverages scale, integration costs and technology benefits across multiple science-based, vertically integrated value chains,” Dow said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday.

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